Russia’s top 20 lies about Ukraine

Author: Julia Davis, Examiner.com

Russia’s aggressive propaganda machine keeps churning out falsehoods, provocations and outright lies about the situation in Ukraine. In spite of being repeatedly exposed, it shows no signs of slowing down.

1. This photo of Kosovo refugees was falsely reported to represent thousands of Ukrainian refugees, allegedly escaping to Russia. In their statements to the media, Russian government officials grossly overstated the number of refugees from Ukraine.

An intercepted telephone conversation revealed that Donetsk separatists were asking their collaborators in Russia to provide them with remnants of a phosphorus bomb, which would in turn enable them to better sell this fabrication to the media.

4. One of the victims of the tragic events in Odessa was falsely represented by the Russian media to have been a pregnant woman, strangled with a cord. In reality, the victim, Anna Varenikina, was a 59 year old woman, who died from the combination of thermal damage, smoke inhalation and related poisoning.

6. This outrageous misrepresentation came straight from Kremlin, echoing false claims disseminated by the Russian mainstream media. Russia's Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine of building concentration camps, where dissenting ethnic Russians would be imprisoned by the authorities. In reality, Ukraine simply continued its 2009 project of building small detention facilities for illegal migrants, designed to hold no more than 100 people at a time. These facilities are very similar to other such detention centers across Europe. Ukrainian government officials expressed their outrage at the depths of depraved, twisted imagination that birthed such a far-fetched fabrication.

7. Russian media, including NTV television program, alleged that members of the Ukrainian military attacked a funeral procession by the separatists. In fact, separatists themselves fired the shots into the air, but were not attacked by the military. This is apparent from the following video of the funeral.

8. Russian media, referring to obscure blogs of conspiracy theorists, claimed that the U.S. refused to accept bodies of 13 CIA spies, allegedly killed when terrorists in Ukraine downed two military helicopters. In reality, two members of the Ukrainian military suffered deaths in these incidents; no foreign agents were present on board the helicopters nor suffered death during these events.

10. Russia's Channel One and other prominent mainstream media falsely claimed that the Ukrainian government ordered the removal of trees from the Maidan, in an attempt to destroy the evidence related to the direction from which the snipers fired on the crowd of protesters. Local blogger from Kyiv conducted an independent investigation, refuting these false claims with photographs and video.

14. A 1995 photo of Russia's notorious atrocities in Chechnya made media rounds as an alleged photo of the victims of the Ukrainian military.

15. Photograph of Russia's bombing of civilian populations in Georgia was represented as a depiction of the alleged bombing by the Ukrainian military in Donbass, Ukraine.

16. Still shot from the video of Russia's artillery drills using "Grad" systems was falsely represented to be the depiction of the Ukrainian military using "Grad" against the civilians of Donbass.

17. Photograph taken in a Russian prison in 2005 was falsely represented as a photo of the Ukrainian military's recruitment station. Russian propagandists went an extra mile by Photoshopping the colors of the Right Sector's flag over the nameplate of one of the guards.

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